


A duty to obey

by Trojie



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Attempted Murder, Episode Related, M/M, Mind Control, Plot What Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-05
Updated: 2012-03-05
Packaged: 2017-11-01 04:29:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/351942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morgana wants Merlin to strike at Arthur when he's most vulnerable. (AU of S04 E06 'A Servant of Two Masters'.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A duty to obey

All Merlin can think, twisting from the ceiling of Morgana's hovel, is that he can't let her win this. He must give nothing away. And she can douse him in water, she can call him names and she can smile flirtatiously up into his face, but she can't make him feel anything but pity and contempt for her. 

She can't make him scared.

Until she asks why he's so loyal to Arthur, and then his own hesitation lets him down. She must read the truth of the answer he dares not give in his pause and his eyes and his posture, because she smiles then, sharp like a blade, and he thinks _fuck_. He's just given her a weapon. 

She curves close to the arc of his body, like the snake she is, and whispers in his ear, 'Oh Merlin. And does he love you in return?' She slides a cold hand under his shirt and over the freezing, clammy skin of his back. 'Does he touch you? Or does he stay faithful to his maidservant slut and shut you out, when you are so loyal and so brave, and you want him so much? When you are so much more deserving than she?'

Merlin bites his lip and will not say a word, because he has always refused to think these things, because they're unworthy and petty and jealous. After all, if he could steer the course of love he would have already done it, would have diverted the path of his own devotion and left Arthur and Gwen to their happiness. 

Morgana has both hands on him now - splayed over the small of his back, and moulded to one hipbone over the soaked cloth of his breeches. 'He's never had you, has he?' she murmurs. 'A shame, to waste this kind of willingness.' And she draws Merlin to nestle against her body, cradles his hips against hers. 'I bet you'd let him take your mouth, wouldn't you - let him feed his manhood over these lips -' and she thumbs at Merlin's mouth gently, urges him to part his jaw as if he's a horse she's inspecting at a fair. 'I'd wager you'd let him go further. And with no risk of bastard sons and daughters -' her pretty face twists '- I don't understand why he doesn't.'

Merlin glares at her, and says nothing.

She pulls away with a laugh that makes Merlin's blood run cold. 'No matter. When I'm done, you won't give him a choice.' Her eyes are alight with mischief when she adds, 'After all, I'm sure you'd like him to die happy.'

***

Arthur's chamber is dark when he pushes into it, or at least darker than it ought to be. Only a few candles are lit, on the desk near his bed, and that's where Merlin is sitting, perched against the edge of the desk. Waiting for him. Arthur remembers the hunger that Merlin came home with from his time in the woods, and suddenly wonders if this is how he means to slake it. 

Arthur stops in his doorway, holding the door, and looks just for a moment at the way the shadows wrap his manservant, like fog around his feet, his face tilted down as if deep in thought, the subtle play of candlelight over his skin. Something catches in Arthur's throat at the sight, and then chokes him. Whatever this looks like, it cannot be. He made decisions about this a long time ago, and he has chosen another, for better or worse. (For better reasons, he knows that for certain, although sometimes the idea that it was for worse ones gnaws at his heart.) 

He lets the door go, to bang against the frame and jolt Merlin from his thoughts, and strides into the room properly. 'Ah, Merlin,' he says, as if he were expecting him. 'You can have the evening off. I think I can manage for myself tonight.' 

'I'm here to serve you,' Merlin says, and slides off the desk to his feet, walks to stand in front of Arthur in a parody of a proper servant's attentiveness. Arthur has had a proper servant's attentiveness while Merlin was lost, and he wants no more part of it. Rather than acknowledge the action, Arthur just brushes past Merlin to his bed, starting to loosen the ties on his shirt. 

'No need, I'm afraid,' he says, feigning a yawn. He tugs at the collar of his shirt, preparatory to hauling it off, when he feels strong fingers catch around his wrist and take the job away from him. Merlin draws the shirt off Arthur's body.

Arthur turns. 'Merlin -'

'I'm here to serve you,' Merlin says again, and he puts an emphasis onto the word serve that Arthur hasn't heard since he came into his full growth and suddenly realised why the maidservants were lingering in his chambers. 

'I have no need for service of that kind,' he says, taking his shirt from Merlin and bundling it up, hoping that being blunt will put Merlin off. But Merlin looks down again, now not for subservience's sake but to eye Arthur's body, and without the shirt hem hanging low, Arthur's growing feelings on Merlin's offer are plain to see. 

Merlin smiles, and sinks to his knees. 

There is a point for every man where arguments of what is good and what is right break down in favour of what he wants, and for Arthur, that point comes with the plush glide of Merlin's lower lip against his half-hard cock. Maidservants who offer this kind of service, Arthur knows (his father told him, the same way he told him everything else about _duty_ and what he had to sacrifice for it), usually rush and hurry, eager to get themselves bedded. A bastard child might carry all kinds of preferment and privilege to its mother, after all. Arthur tells himself all of this in a frantic rush inside his head so that he might not embarrass himself in the velvet wetness of Merlin's mouth, but all it does is remind him that Merlin could never carry a bastard child, that he could fuck Merlin safely -

Merlin sucks cock like he wants to, and it doesn't help, it doesn't help Arthur one bit. He has to do something with his hands, they feel useless hanging idly by his sides while Merlin does all the work. He reaches forward a little, meaning to stroke his fingers through the soft-looking hair at the nape of Merlin's neck, maybe to touch the skin that's always been hidden beneath those horrible neckerchiefs and taunted Arthur so, but the second he touches there Merlin pulls away, gets back up to his feet leaving Arthur gasping with the sudden cold and lack of sensation.

'Come to bed, my lord,' Merlin says with his eyes hooded. 'I made myself ready for you earlier.' Arthur still knows there's something wrong, but it's lost beneath the rush of blood pounding in his veins. It's getting harder and harder to see why he should not just take this. Other kings would. This would be their right and their due. Under Camelot law as it currently stands, because Arthur has not got around to changing it, it is still Arthur's right and due. 

But still, he has to - and then Merlin has him on the bed, pinned by his wrists, and Merlin is smiling at him and unlacing his shirt. 

The weak candlelight plays only on one half of Merlin's face, lending colour to his skin there where the moonlight through the window saps it elsewhere. Arthur feels drunk, or bespelled, as Merlin strips him and takes off his own trousers, straddling Arthur's lap and reaching back between his own legs. His face breaks into bright, trembling pleasure as he touches himself, too briefly for Arthur's liking.

Arthur wants to make Merlin feel that way and wants to make _sure_ of Merlin's preparation, and so he tries to touch, but Merlin will have none of it. As if he's following some carefully-laid plan, he braces himself with his hands bracketing Arthur's head, and starts to push down, and that should - it feels - Arthur doesn't have words any more, suddenly, but it's still wrong, it still jars him, and perhaps because of that he starts to notice that Merlin is fishing around underneath the pillows that cradle Arthur's head. 

Arthur is buried deep within Merlin's body when Merlin thrusts the dagger at his throat. 

Arthur catches his wrist, and they both freeze. 'Merlin, what are you doing?' Arthur asks. They are both trembling like horses ready for the hunt. Arthur's thighs are straining. He wants to thrust up. He wants to take what he's being given. 

Merlin is trying to twitch his dagger-hand free, and whether by accident or design that makes him rock deeper and deeper, as if he's seeking completion as desperately as he is murder. Arthur aches just to take him. He knows he could roll them over, disarm Merlin and hold him down into the mattress and fuck him until he forgot all thought of killing and instead _surrendered_ \- to Arthur and to pleasure. Because Arthur wants him to feel pleasure.

Again, Arthur demands, and he is fucking Merlin now, he can't deny it, he can't _stop himself_ \- 'What are you doing? Merlin, please -'

'My duty, sire,' Merlin whispers. 'My duty.'

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Die Happy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/376460) by [jelazakazone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jelazakazone/pseuds/jelazakazone)
  * [Duty To Save](https://archiveofourown.org/works/408574) by [twilightHDfan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilightHDfan/pseuds/twilightHDfan)




End file.
